Restaurant Valuation Calculator: How to Value a Restaurant and What Restaurants Sell For
Enter your sales and owner earnings and read a range benchmarked to what restaurants actually closed at, not to the asking prices on the listing sites.
Estimated business value
Method breakdown
What moves this number
Estimate, not a certified appraisal. Your figures are not stored.
Restaurants sold in the US across the five years to 2025 went for a median of 1.85x seller discretionary earnings, or 0.33x annual sales, with an upper quartile of 2.53x and a lower quartile of 1.34x. The median restaurant sale price was $220,000, on median sales of $718,271 and median owner earnings of $120,355, after a median 178 days on the market. That is the lowest revenue multiple of any food service category in the same dataset, below bakeries, coffee shops, bars and breweries, and the reason is arithmetic rather than sentiment: a restaurant keeps 16.8 cents of owner earnings from each dollar of sales, less than every food service business measured except a brewery.
The gap between what restaurants ask and what they get is the widest we have measured in any sector, and most of it is not negotiation. This page separates the two. Last updated September 2026. It is a benchmark and an estimator, not a certified appraisal.
Closed transactions
What restaurants actually sold for
These are sale prices, not asking prices, from 8,692 restaurants sold across the five years 2021 to 2025. It is by a wide margin the largest closed-transaction set behind any page on this site. Most writing on restaurant valuation quotes a 30 to 45 percent of sales rule and stops there. The useful part is the shape of the distribution, because the distance between the bottom and the top of it is $143,222, or slightly more than the median restaurant earns its owner in a year.
Median sale price
$220,000
What the middle restaurant actually closed at
Median asking price
$250,000
What the middle restaurant was listed at
Median revenue
$718,271
Annual sales of the middle restaurant sold
Median owner earnings (SDE)
$120,355
Seller discretionary earnings of the middle restaurant sold
| Restaurants sold, 2021 to 2025 | Lower quartile | Median | Average | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seller discretionary earnings multiple | 1.34x | 1.85x | 2.15x | 2.53x |
| Revenue multiple (multiple of annual sales) | 0.23x | 0.33x | 0.39x | 0.46x |
| Revenue | $438,005 | $718,271 | $987,600 | $1,200,000 |
| Owner earnings (SDE) | $75,000 | $120,355 | $176,943 | $207,907 |
Source: BizBuySell restaurant valuation benchmarks, restaurants sold on the platform 2021 to 2025, retrieved September 2026. Benchmarks, not quotes. The multiple rows and the dollar rows are computed on the same population but not on the same restaurant, so multiplying a median by a median will not exactly reproduce a quartile.
Our calculation
Why pricing high and negotiating down does not work on a restaurant
The median restaurant listing asks 2.50x owner earnings. The median restaurant that sold went for 1.85x. A 26 percent gap looks like a market where every seller gets beaten down at the table, and that is the wrong conclusion. The average sale to ask ratio in the same dataset is 0.90, which means the restaurants that closed only conceded about a tenth off their own asking price. Dividing the sold multiple by that ratio recovers what those sellers were asking before anyone negotiated.
| Sector | Median asking multiple, all listings | Implied ask of the sellers who closed | Selection effect | Median sold multiple | Negotiation effect | Total gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | 2.50x | 2.06x | -17.8% | 1.85x | -10.0% | -26.0% |
| Accounting and tax practices | 2.32x | 2.10x | -9.3% | 2.04x | -3.0% | -12.1% |
Restaurants that actually sold were listed at about 2.06x owner earnings. The whole listing pool asks 2.50x. So of the 26 percent gap, 10 points came from negotiating and 17.8 points came from selection: the restaurants asking materially more than 2.06x are, in the main, not the ones that transact. They sit on the market, they do not get talked down to a sale, and eventually they come off.
Put the same arithmetic next to accounting practices, the other sector on this site with a published asking and sold distribution, and the contrast is sharp. An accounting practice concedes 3 percent at the table and loses 9.3 percent to selection. A restaurant concedes 10 percent and loses 17.8 percent. Both effects are roughly three times larger in restaurants, which is what a market with a long median time on market and a high failure rate looks like from the inside.
The practical instruction is unusually clear for valuation content. Price a restaurant near 2.06x owner earnings if the objective is to sell it. Above roughly 2.5x you are joining the population that supplies the asking distribution rather than the sold one, and the median restaurant that did sell still took 178 days to do it.
Our calculation
Asking multiples against sold multiples, at every quartile
The source publishes asking and sold multiples at the same four points of the same distribution but never subtracts one from the other. The gap column is ours. It is remarkably flat: a restaurant asking in the bottom quartile is discounted by the same 26 percent as one asking at the median, which is another way of saying the market is not selective about which optimistic sellers it ignores.
| Point in the distribution | Asking, earnings multiple | Sold, earnings multiple | Gap | Asking, revenue multiple | Sold, revenue multiple | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower quartile | 1.81x | 1.34x | -26.0% | 0.30x | 0.23x | -23.3% |
| Median | 2.50x | 1.85x | -26.0% | 0.45x | 0.33x | -26.7% |
| Average | 3.35x | 2.15x | -35.8% | 0.63x | 0.39x | -38.1% |
| Upper quartile | 3.41x | 2.53x | -25.8% | 0.67x | 0.46x | -31.3% |
The average row moves more than the quartiles because averages carry the tail, and the asking tail in restaurants is long. An average asking multiple of 3.35x against an upper quartile of 3.41x tells you a small number of listings are asking far more than anything in this market has ever paid.
Our calculation
The revenue multiple is not a separate fact, it is margin times the earnings multiple
A revenue multiple and an earnings multiple are not two independent opinions about a restaurant. Divide one by the other and you get the owner margin the market is implicitly assuming. Run that at all four points of both distributions and it should reproduce the margin visible in the dollar tables, otherwise something in the source does not hold together.
| Point in the distribution | Implied margin, asking multiples | Implied margin, sold multiples | Agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower quartile | 16.6% | 17.2% | 0.6 points |
| Median | 18.0% | 17.8% | 0.2 points |
| Average | 18.8% | 18.1% | 0.7 points |
| Upper quartile | 19.6% | 18.2% | 1.5 points |
The two columns agree to within 0.2 points at the median and never diverge by more than 1.5 points. They also agree with the dollars: median owner earnings of $120,355 on median sales of $718,271 is a 16.8 percent margin, against the 17.8 percent the sold multiples imply. That one point of difference is the usual artefact of comparing a ratio of medians to a median of ratios, and it is worth stating rather than hiding.
The reason this matters to a seller is that it turns the folk rule inside out. Nobody decided restaurants should sell for a third of sales. The median owner margin is 16.8 percent, the median earnings multiple is 1.85x, and 0.168 multiplied by 1.85 is 0.31. The percentage of sales is an output. If your margin is 22 percent rather than 16.8 percent, the same multiple produces 41 percent of sales, and quoting the rule of thumb at yourself costs you the difference.
Our calculation
Why restaurants sell for less per dollar of sales than anything else in food service
Eleven food service categories from the same platform and the same five years. The margin column and the implied revenue multiple column are ours: median owner earnings divided by median revenue, then multiplied by the average earnings multiple. Sorted by margin, highest first.
| Category | Median revenue | Median owner earnings | Owner margin | Earnings multiple | Revenue multiple | Implied revenue multiple | Median sale price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food trucks | $240,000 | $70,000 | 29.2% | 1.71x | 0.56x | 0.50x | $87,000 |
| Donut shops | $360,000 | $99,500 | 27.6% | 2.12x | 0.58x | 0.59x | $182,500 |
| Catering companies | $931,891 | $212,204 | 22.8% | 2.00x | 0.44x | 0.46x | $332,500 |
| Ice cream and frozen yogurt shops | $365,122 | $78,036 | 21.4% | 2.47x | 0.57x | 0.53x | $155,000 |
| Coffee shops and cafes | $375,000 | $78,780 | 21.0% | 2.20x | 0.46x | 0.46x | $150,000 |
| Health food and nutrition businesses | $492,798 | $100,000 | 20.3% | 2.51x | 0.58x | 0.51x | $200,000 |
| Juice bars | $378,721 | $74,627 | 19.7% | 2.12x | 0.45x | 0.42x | $125,000 |
| Bakeries | $545,567 | $104,527 | 19.2% | 2.40x | 0.50x | 0.46x | $205,482 |
| Bars, pubs and taverns | $800,000 | $134,923 | 16.9% | 2.73x | 0.51x | 0.46x | $299,500 |
| Restaurants | $718,271 | $120,355 | 16.8% | 2.15x | 0.39x | 0.36x | $220,000 |
| Breweries | $833,904 | $113,145 | 13.6% | 3.34x | 0.52x | 0.45x | $300,000 |
Restaurants carry the lowest revenue multiple in the group at 0.39x, against a food service median of 0.51x. Two things compound to produce that. Their 16.8 percent owner margin is 3.5 points below the food service median of 20.3 percent, and their 2.15x earnings multiple is slightly below the group median of 2.20x. Low margin multiplied by a slightly low multiple lands you at the bottom of the table.
Breweries make the point in reverse and are the most interesting row here. A brewery keeps less of each dollar of sales than a restaurant, 13.6 percent against 16.8 percent, and yet sells for a third more per dollar of sales, 0.52x against 0.39x. That happens because buyers pay 3.34x for brewery earnings and 2.15x for restaurant earnings, a 55 percent premium on the same dollar of owner cash. Licensing, brand, tangible plant and a customer who identifies with the product are what that premium buys. It is a clean demonstration that a revenue multiple tells you almost nothing on its own.
The implied column runs about 7 percent below the published revenue multiple across the table, in the same direction every time. That is expected: the published multiple is an average taken across sold businesses, while the margin is a ratio of two medians, and averages of ratios sit above ratios of medians in a right-skewed set. The rank order survives, which is the part that matters. Where restaurants sit against every other industry rather than only food service is in revenue multiples by industry and SDE multiples by industry.
One caution about the source, offered because we checked it. Several rows report an average sale to ask ratio that does not equal their own median sale price divided by their own median asking price. Breweries report 0.97 where the medians give 0.67, catering reports 0.87 against 0.75, bakeries 0.93 against 0.83. A median of individual ratios is not the ratio of the medians, and in thin categories the two can separate widely. We quote the reported ratio and flag the discrepancy rather than silently choosing one.
Our calculation
Five years of restaurant sales, and the squeeze the multiples are reacting to
The margin column is ours, and it is the line that makes the rest of the table make sense. Every other column comes straight from the source.
| Year sold | Median revenue | Median owner earnings | Owner margin | Earnings multiple | Revenue multiple | Median sale price | Median asking price | Sale to ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $625,167 | $110,000 | 17.6% | 1.97x | 0.39x | $196,500 | $220,000 | 0.91 |
| 2022 | $671,000 | $124,462 | 18.5% | 2.09x | 0.40x | $225,000 | $249,000 | 0.92 |
| 2023 | $747,943 | $120,000 | 16.0% | 2.18x | 0.38x | $215,000 | $249,950 | 0.91 |
| 2024 | $720,000 | $125,000 | 17.4% | 2.18x | 0.38x | $225,000 | $250,000 | 0.89 |
| 2025 | $773,498 | $126,500 | 16.4% | 2.25x | 0.37x | $225,000 | $265,000 | 0.88 |
Between 2021 and 2025 the median restaurant that sold grew its sales by 23.7 percent and its owner earnings by only 15.0 percent. The owner margin fell from 17.6 percent to 16.4 percent. That is food and labor cost inflation showing up in transaction records rather than in a survey, and it is measured on the businesses that were good enough to sell.
Now look at what the two multiple series did over the same period. The earnings multiple rose 14.2 percent, from 1.97x to 2.25x. The revenue multiple fell 5.1 percent, from 0.39x to 0.37x. Those look contradictory and they are not. Buyers did not become more nervous about restaurant earnings, they became more nervous about restaurant sales, because a dollar of restaurant sales now arrives with 1.25 cents less owner cash attached to it than it did in 2021. Price the earnings and the two series reconcile immediately.
The third movement is the one sellers should read most carefully. Median asking prices rose 20.5 percent over the five years while median sale prices rose 14.5 percent, and the sale to ask ratio drifted from 0.91 down to 0.88. Seller expectations have been moving faster than buyer behaviour for four consecutive years. The full cross-industry picture of what has happened to operating margins is in profit margins by industry.
Our calculation
Value a restaurant on earnings, not on sales, and here is the margin of error for each
The source publishes the median sale price directly, and it separately publishes the medians needed to rebuild that price two different ways. Doing both is a test of which valuation route actually describes this market.
| Route to the median sale price | Arithmetic | Result | Distance from the observed price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner earnings route | $120,355 x 1.85 | $222,657 | +1.2% |
| Revenue route | $718,271 x 0.33 | $237,029 | +7.7% |
| Observed median sale price | Reported directly | $220,000 | Reference |
The earnings route lands 1.2 percent from the observed median. The revenue route overshoots by 7.7 percent, more than six times the error. On a $220,000 restaurant that is the difference between a defensible number and $17,000 of imaginary value. Use owner earnings as the primary method and sales only as a sanity check, which is the same order our business valuation calculator applies. If you are unsure which earnings figure to start from, how to calculate SDE walks through the add-backs line by line.
Our calculation
What the same restaurant is worth at each grade
The median restaurant that sold earned its owner $120,355. Holding those earnings constant and moving only the multiple shows what the qualitative differences are actually worth in cash.
| Where you sit | Price on median earnings of $120,355 | What a restaurant at this grade looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Lower quartile, 1.34x | $161,276 | Owner cooks or runs the floor daily, a short or month-to-month lease, cash sales that do not reconcile to the tax return, deferred kitchen maintenance |
| Median, 1.85x | $222,657 | A normal owner-operated independent with a working lease, a documented POS trail and a stable local trade |
| Average, 2.15x | $258,763 | Pulled above the median by the larger and better-run restaurants in the set |
| Upper quartile, 2.53x | $304,498 | A salaried general manager, five or more years of lease term with options, clean reconciled books, current equipment and a spread of revenue across dine-in, bar and off-premise |
$143,222 separates the bottom of that table from the top, on identical earnings. That is 1.19 times what the median restaurant pays its owner in a year, and none of it is won by negotiating harder. It is won by the lease, the reconciliation and the general manager, in the eighteen months before the listing goes up.
Our calculation
Restaurants are cheap because of risk, not because lenders will not fund them
A common explanation for low restaurant multiples is that lenders will not support a higher price. The arithmetic does not agree. Below is the price a ten year note supports on the published median restaurant earnings of $120,355, at 10.5 percent, with a 10 percent equity injection and a 1.25 debt service coverage requirement, once the buyer pays a general manager so they are not buying themselves a job.
| Manager salary the buyer pays | Cash left for debt service | Annual debt service at 1.25x cover | Loan supported | Price supported | As a multiple of earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $75,355 | $60,284 | $372,303 | $413,670 | 3.44x |
| $55,000 | $65,355 | $52,284 | $322,896 | $358,774 | 2.98x |
| $65,000 | $55,355 | $44,284 | $273,490 | $303,877 | 2.52x |
| $75,000 | $45,355 | $36,284 | $224,083 | $248,981 | 2.07x |
Even the most conservative row supports 2.07x, and restaurants sell at a median of 1.85x. At a realistic $55,000 manager salary the cash flow supports 2.98x, or $358,774 against a median sale price of $220,000. Debt service is not the binding constraint. Buyers pay under 2x because they are pricing the probability the earnings persist, not because a lender is refusing.
That said, cash flow is only one of the tests a restaurant loan has to pass, and the other two are where these deals actually die. Collateral coverage is poor, because leasehold improvements and used kitchen equipment liquidate for a fraction of cost. And lenders generally want lease term at least matching the loan term, which quietly makes a ten year note impossible on a restaurant with three years left on its lease. Fix the lease before you test the market. The mechanics of the loan itself are in the SBA loan to buy a business, and what a lender wants the valuation to look like is in business valuation for an SBA loan.
What moves the number
What decides where in the range a restaurant lands
Lease term and rent load
The most underrated line in a restaurant valuation, because the buyer is acquiring the lease as much as the business. Five or more years of remaining term with options supports the top of the range. Under two years of term, a landlord who has not consented to assignment, or occupancy cost above roughly 10 percent of sales, and buyers discount hard or walk. A lease renegotiated before you list is often worth more than a year of profit improvement, and it costs nothing but a conversation.
Earnings a buyer can verify
Restaurants are the most cash-intensive small business category left, and unverifiable sales are the fastest way to the lower quartile. If the POS reports, the bank deposits, the merchant statements and the tax return do not reconcile, a buyer prices only what can be proven and a lender will not finance the rest. Twelve clean reconciled months is the single cheapest thing you can do to move up the distribution.
Owner dependence
A restaurant where the owner expedites, schedules, orders and signs the checks is a job with equipment attached. A salaried general manager and a kitchen that runs without the owner present is what separates the 1.34x lower quartile from the 2.53x upper quartile, and it is most of the $143,222 between them.
Deferred equipment and buildout
Buyers subtract the hood, the walk-in, the line or the HVAC they expect to replace in year one, and they subtract it at more than its replacement cost because it comes with downtime. Restaurant assets also liquidate for very little, which is why lenders lean on cash flow and lease rather than on collateral.
Revenue mix and channel concentration
A high share of sales through third party delivery carries both a margin haircut and platform risk that a buyer prices as fragility. A spread across dine-in, bar, catering and direct off-premise reads as more durable. Bar mix in particular lifts margin, which is why bars and taverns show a higher earnings multiple than restaurants in the same dataset.
Concept transferability
If the concept depends on a named chef, a personal following or a recipe the owner will not document, the buyer is purchasing a risk rather than a system. Documented recipes, prep sheets, vendor terms and a trained crew move the business from a personality to an operation, which is the difference the multiple is measuring.
By format
How different restaurant formats price
The closed data above describes independent restaurants. Adjacent formats price differently, and where the same dataset reports them separately we use its figures rather than a general range.
| Format | Where it prices | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Independent full service | 1.34x to 2.53x SDE, median 1.85x | The population this page describes. Priced on owner earnings, capped in practice by lease term and by how much of the trade survives the owner leaving. |
| Quick service and fast casual independent | Toward the upper half of the same range | Simpler operations, lower chef dependence and easier staffing generally price above full service at the same earnings, because the buyer pool is wider and the transition is shorter. |
| Bar, pub or tavern | Median 2.73x earnings, 0.51x sales | Reported separately in the same dataset and at a materially higher earnings multiple than restaurants. Where a liquor license carries independent transferable value, it is often priced alongside rather than inside the multiple. |
| Franchised single unit | Typically above the independent band | The brand supplies demand and a proven operating system, and lenders treat franchised units more favorably. The franchisor also has to approve your buyer, which narrows the pool and lengthens the timeline. |
| Multi-unit group | Priced on EBITDA after a market manager salary | Once salaried management replaces the owner at each unit, the buyer is underwriting EBITDA rather than SDE. That is a different and generally higher band, and a different buyer. |
Once you are pricing a group on EBITDA rather than a single unit on owner earnings, the relevant benchmark changes as well. EBITDA multiples by industry covers where multi-unit food service sits, and SDE against EBITDA explains which of the two your restaurant should actually be measured on.
Before you list
How to raise your restaurant valuation before you sell
Given what the decomposition showed, the ordering here matters more in restaurants than in most sectors. You cannot recover a bad position by asking more, because asking more mostly removes you from the pool of businesses that sell at all.
- Deal with the lease first, and start a year out. Moving from two years remaining to five with options can be worth more than any operational improvement on this list, and it is the item a lender checks before it checks your profit and loss. Get the landlord's consent to assignment in writing at the same time.
- Reconcile twelve months before you list, not during diligence. POS reports, merchant settlements, bank deposits and the tax return should agree. Every dollar that cannot be traced through all four is a dollar a buyer will not pay for and a lender will not lend against, and finding this out in week six of a deal usually ends it.
- Put a general manager in place and step back visibly. This is the single change that moves a restaurant from the lower quartile toward the upper one, and it needs to have been true for months before a buyer will believe it. A buyer who watches you expedite every service is buying a job.
- Clear the deferred maintenance. Replacing a failing walk-in for $12,000 typically removes far more than $12,000 from the buyer's price reduction, because buyers price both the repair and the disruption. Walk the kitchen with fresh eyes and fix what an inspector will list.
- Document the operation so it survives you. Recipes, prep sheets, par levels, vendor terms, opening and closing procedures and a trained crew are what turn a concept into a transferable asset. Restaurants where the systems live in the owner's head price at the bottom of the range regardless of what the profit and loss says.
- Broaden the revenue mix. Heavy dependence on one delivery platform, one corporate account or one night of the week reads as fragility. Bar mix, catering and direct off-premise all lift margin, and margin is what the multiple is applied to.
- Evidence the add-backs. Personal expenses run through the restaurant only count toward SDE if you can support them. Our guide to adjusted EBITDA add-backs covers which ones survive scrutiny and which quietly cost you credibility on everything else.
Run your sales and owner earnings through the estimator at the top of this page to see where you currently sit, then read how to increase business value before selling for the longer playbook. When you are ready to go to market, selling a restaurant compares what a broker, a listing site and a direct approach to a local operator each actually net you.
Questions
Restaurant valuation questions people actually ask
How much is my restaurant worth?
The median US restaurant sold between 2021 and 2025 went for $220,000, which was 1.85x its owner earnings and 0.33x its annual sales. The middle 50 percent of sales landed between 1.34x and 2.53x earnings. Start from your seller discretionary earnings, apply 1.85x, then move up or down for lease term, owner dependence and how well your books reconcile.
What multiple do restaurants sell for?
Restaurants sold on a median of 1.85x seller discretionary earnings, with a lower quartile of 1.34x and an upper quartile of 2.53x across 8,692 closed US sales. On sales the median was 0.33x. That is the lowest revenue multiple of any food service category, below bakeries, bars, coffee shops and breweries, because a restaurant keeps less of each dollar of sales than any of them except a brewery.
How do you value a restaurant?
Value a restaurant on its owner earnings, not its sales. Take twelve months of seller discretionary earnings, apply a multiple between 1.34x and 2.53x depending on lease, owner dependence and verifiability, then sanity-check against sales at roughly 0.33x. In the closed data the earnings route lands within 1.2 percent of the observed median sale price while the revenue route overstates it by 7.7 percent.
What percentage of sales does a restaurant sell for?
The median restaurant sold for 33 percent of one year of sales, with a lower quartile of 23 percent and an upper quartile of 46 percent. The often-quoted 30 to 45 percent band is roughly right, but it is a consequence rather than a rule: 33 percent is simply the median 16.8 percent owner margin multiplied by the median 1.85x earnings multiple.
How long does it take to sell a restaurant?
The median restaurant that sold spent 178 days on the market. That is the figure for restaurants that actually closed, so it understates the wait for the ones that never sell. Restaurants listed above roughly 2.06x owner earnings largely do not transact at all, which is why the median listing multiple is far higher than the median sold multiple.
How much is a restaurant worth with $1 million in sales?
At the median 16.8 percent owner margin, $1,000,000 of sales implies about $168,000 of seller discretionary earnings, and at the median 1.85x that is roughly $310,000. Applying the median 0.33x revenue multiple directly gives $330,000. Treat the earnings figure as the primary answer and the revenue figure as the cross-check, because two restaurants with identical sales and different margins are not worth the same.
Do restaurants sell for more or less than other small businesses?
Less. Restaurants trade at the lowest revenue multiple in the entire food service group at 0.39x average, against a food service median of 0.51x, and their 2.15x average earnings multiple is below the 2.20x food service median. The discount is a risk discount rather than a financing one: the median restaurant cash flow would comfortably service a price near 3x, and buyers still pay under 2x.
How much does a restaurant appraisal cost?
A formal appraisal from a credentialed valuator generally runs $2,000 to $10,000 depending on scope, and a calculation engagement commonly costs $1,500 to $8,000. Brokers frequently provide an opinion of value at no charge when you engage them to sell, which is useful but is not independent, because the person providing it is paid when the sale happens.
Does the liquor license add to a restaurant valuation?
Only where the license is independently transferable and supply is capped, which varies by state and by county. In quota jurisdictions a license has an observable market price and is commonly negotiated alongside the business rather than inside the earnings multiple. Where licenses are issued freely on application, the license carries little separate value and shows up only through the bar margin it enables.
Should I value my restaurant on EBITDA or SDE?
Use SDE for a single owner-operated location, because the buyer will run it themselves and the owner compensation belongs in the earnings. Switch to EBITDA once a salaried general manager already runs the unit and the owner is not required on site, and for any group of three or more locations. Valuing an owner-operated restaurant on EBITDA understates it, because it charges a manager salary the buyer is not going to pay.
Last updated September 2026
Asked another way
What owners ask when they are deciding, not researching
These are the questions that come up once the numbers are understood and the decision is the actual problem. Answered against the same closed-transaction data as the rest of this page.
Is now a good time to sell my restaurant?
The median restaurant sale price has been flat at $225,000 since 2022 while median asking prices rose to $265,000, and the sale to ask ratio slipped from 0.91 to 0.88. Buyers are paying a higher multiple of earnings than they did in 2021, up from 1.97x to 2.25x, but a lower multiple of sales. If your margin has held up, the market is better for you than it was five years ago. If your margin has compressed with everyone else, the higher earnings multiple is applying to a smaller number.
Should I price my restaurant high and negotiate down?
The data says no, and this is the most useful thing on this page. The median restaurant listing asks 2.50x owner earnings. The median that actually sold went for 1.85x, but only 10 percent of that gap came from negotiation. The other 17.8 percent is selection: the restaurants that closed were listed near 2.06x in the first place. Restaurants priced well above that mostly do not sell at a discount, they simply do not sell.
Is my restaurant worth more than the 30 percent of sales rule?
Possibly, and the way to tell is your owner margin. The 30 to 45 percent of sales rule is really the median 16.8 percent owner margin multiplied by an earnings multiple. If you keep 22 percent of sales as owner earnings rather than 16.8 percent, the same 1.85x multiple produces 41 percent of sales rather than 31 percent. Value the earnings and let the percentage of sales fall out of it, not the other way around.
Is a restaurant valuation worth paying for before I list?
A formal appraisal costing $2,000 to $10,000 is worth it when a lender, a court, a divorce or a partner buyout requires an independent opinion. For setting a listing price it usually is not, because the inputs that decide your number are your own: twelve reconciled months, your lease term and whether the restaurant runs without you. Establish those first, take a free estimate to a range, and buy the appraisal only when someone else needs to rely on it.
What do people say about what restaurants sell for?
We do not aggregate reviews or opinions, and the figures on this page are not survey results. They are the reported sale prices and financials of 8,692 restaurants sold in the US between 2021 and 2025, published by the platform the sales closed on. Where those figures disagree with a widely repeated rule of thumb, we show the arithmetic rather than pick a side, and the source is named so anyone can check it.
Will a bank lend against what I am asking for my restaurant?
On cash flow alone, comfortably. The median restaurant SDE of $120,355 supports a price near $358,774, or 2.98x, on a ten year note at 10.5 percent with a 1.25 debt service coverage requirement and a $55,000 manager salary. That is well above the 1.85x buyers actually pay. Lending is not what caps restaurant prices. Collateral and lease term are the real underwriting problems, because a used kitchen liquidates for very little.
Benchmarks behind the estimate
Find out where in the range your restaurant sits
Enter your sales and owner earnings and read a value range against real restaurant sales. An educational estimate, not a certified appraisal.